the best policy

The previous post was a bit of a political ramble and was nowhere near as popular as other recent ones that feature pretty photos and fragments of poetry, so let’s try again.
Butterflies tend to be too erratic for me to catch on film, but when I saw this brimstone the other day, despite the fact it was breezy and I was already late for an appointment, I paused, pointed the camera and hoped for the best.

I snapped a number of pictures as the butterfly was blown about and fluttered back time and again, but this is the only one that was good enough to post.

Wondering about a title for the blog post, I thought of how the poor creature had to contend with a lot of buffeting but still clung to its place, so I was toying with “hold fast” or the more complete quotation “hold fast to that which is good.”

But what exactly is it that the butterfly is clinging to? A quick look through Google images suggests that the flowers are honesty – the ones that become silver pennies in autumn.

If I could be sure I’d found a politician who would cling to honesty as a principle rather than focus on the silver pennies it might result in, a politician who would return to honesty as this butterfly did, even when temporarily blown off course, I might well be tempted to vote for them.